Part 2: Our legacy in Kandahar

For better or worse, Canada’s legacy in Kandahar is left in the hands of men such as Mussa Kalim. He’s the 22-year-old malik -Pashto for appointed leader -of Salavat, a village of about 1,500 battered souls in Panjwaii district, west of Kandahar city.

Like others in the area, his village is poor and primitive, a place where raw sewage trickles down streets, where children run barefoot. In rural Panjwaii, women are kept with livestock behind walls of mud and straw.

Salavat might seem too small or insignificant -and Mr. Kalim, pictured below, too young -to have warranted more than passing notice from Canadian soldiers on their deployment to Kandahar in 2006.

And yet this village and others around it became a preoccupation, first as battle scenes and, more recently, as centres of reconstruction. They would epitomize Canada’s campaign in Kandahar province.

The Canadian mission, which ends formally in Kandahar on Tuesday, was never limited to combat; it always included elements of development and nation-building. Mending the province’s villages and its shambolic capital, Kandahar city, and trying to nurture governance and rules of law required more than military resources and diplomacy, more than machinery, bricks and talk. Experts from cities across Canada arrived in droves. Civil servants, relief workers, private-sector employees. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, police officers.

Their efforts were ambitious, technical and expensive. They ranged from training teachers and building dozens of schools in conflict zones to mending broken infrastructure, such as Kandahar’s massive, neglected irrigation system, integral to the province’s agrarian economy. They included attempts to pull from the Middle Ages its policing and judiciary, and rehabilitating its largest prison, the notoriously assailable Sarposa.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent and some were no doubt squandered.

Progress was slow, and delayed by fear, interrupted by bursts of violence. The Taliban were not defeated; they never left. They continued to threaten and to kill Afghans who dared assist Canadians in their endeavours. Meanwhile, some civilians looked for opportunities to help only themselves.

At times, Canada’s sacrifices were crassly exploited. Reconstruction projects and attempts to fashion some kind of peace depended on sincerity and commitment, two components in short supply. Local partnerships and alliances were inscrutable. To many Afghans, everything seemed negotiable, including trust.

From this complex environment emerged Mr. Kalim. He became an unlikely leader and Canadian ally. He’s not a powerful and charismatic figure like Panjwaii’s barrel-chested district leader, a former mujahedeen warrior named Hajji Fazluddin Agha. Nor is he feared, like the local drug lords and some land owners.

With little, if any, property to his name and only four years of primary school education, Mr. Kalim has more in common with the marginalized, illiterate tenant farmers who eke out their meagre livings in and around Salavat. But he has some influence, or so the Canadians hoped.

His father was the malik until he was murdered three years ago. He had taken a trip into Kandahar city to speak with government officials. A dozen Talibs stopped his car on his return journey. They demanded to know every passenger’s name. They had found whom they were looking for. They dragged the malik from the vehicle and shot him in the head.

Young Mr. Kalim and the rest of his family moved to safer ground in the city. The Taliban, meanwhile, ran roughshod over Salavat. Indeed, some villagers welcomed them back; the local mullah is said to be friendly with Mullah Omar, the one-eyed cleric who was head of state, Commander of the Faithful of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, until his Taliban government fell in late 2001. He fled Kandahar and is believed to be living in Pakistan.

According to an AfghanCanadian hired to help Task Force Kandahar understand local affairs, Salavat “has close ties to the Taliban. It’s a very conservative town. It’s name means ‘prayer.’ ”

The village and its surroundings crawled with insurgents. Roads and fields were seeded with improvised explosive devices (IEDs). But Canadian soldiers settled near Salavat in 2009 and used an old school and its small compound as an outpost before building a larger and more fortified forward operating base next door.

Holding Salavat was difficult and no reconstruction efforts were possible. But last year brought noticeable improvements in security, especially after the third and final phase of Operation Hamkari, a major coalition clear-and-hold operation in Panjwaii and Zhari district to the north. U.S. and Afghan troops claimed territory that had been controlled by the Taliban in the western half of Panjwaii, and Canadian troops consolidated and expanded their influence in the other half, in and around villages such as Salavat, Chalghowr and Nakhonay.

By December 2010, Canadian soldiers were rebuilding the damaged Salavat school compound, with some help from locals. Work continued in the new year; the small concrete classrooms were painted, inside and out, and basic playground equipment and solarpowered lights were installed in the yard. Finishing touches were completed by March. The Canadians had done their part, as they had many times before.

And Mr. Kalim took a bold step. He formally pledged his support for the Canadian effort and to the Afghan government.

With approval from Mr. Agha, the new Panjwaii district governor, pictured below, Mr. Kalim replaced his father’s successor and became malik. It was now up to him to represent Salavat at local government level and ensure its residents were participating in small development projects undertaken there, including clearing irrigation canals.

Villagers were paid for their work; Canadian civil-military co-operation (CIMIC) soldiers stationed at the forward operating base supplied the cash, and Mr. Kalim was responsible for handing it to the people.

He was also asked to help convince parents that sending their children to the refurbished school would be a blessing. Of course, the Taliban had a different message. Send your children to school, they threatened, and face the consequences: injury or death.

The school sat empty. Salavat was at a tipping point.

Mr. Kalim was a visible presence in the village, but only during daylight. In the evenings, he returned to his family in Kandahar city. He felt they were safer there.

They probably were. Kandahar’s capital is a sprawling urban centre, with a population of about 750,000. It’s easier to live there without being noticed than in a small, rural village. Those with means can build a fortress and hire armed guards to protect it.

But it’s still one of the world’s most lawless, dangerous cities. Suicide bombings and IED attacks erupt almost daily. The Taliban target, ambush and kill government workers in the streets, inside government buildings, even inside mosques. More than 50 provincial and municipal government workers, politicians and security officers have been assassinated in the city in the past three years alone. Ordinary Kandaharis face enormous risks, too, just leaving their homes and trying to go about their ordinary business.

Insurgents run amok, and so do common criminals. Kidnappings are all too common. Three years ago, with security in the city not yet at its worst, I met a nine-year-old boy named Abdul Walid Zalal. He was grabbed from a downtown street as he walked home from school, and shoved into a car.

He described how his abductors drove him to a location far from the city, and stuffed him into a cage in a basement. There were other boys there, in cages, Abdul recalled. He also recalled peeking out from the underground bunker and glimpsing Afghan National Police (ANP) vehicles parked in the kidnappers’ compound.

The abductors contacted his father, a local glassware wholesaler. He was told to fork over US$200,000 or Abdul would be cut into pieces and shot.

“I approached the police when my boy was taken,” the father told me. “And the chief himself told me to pay off the kidnappers. A couple of times I was even sitting with the police chief when the kidnappers called to tell me they were going to cut off the boy’s leg or ears. The police chief just sat there.”

A smaller ransom was paid and Abdul was released.

A few weeks later, in February 2008, three ANP officers went on trial, accused of kidnapping and repeatedly sodomizing another local man and his 12-year-old son.

Their case was heard by a local judge and proceeded at lightning speed; the entire process, including testimonies, deliberations and sentencing, was conducted in an hour. None of perpetrators was represented by counsel.

It was a month of horrible violence. Hundreds of Kandaharis gathered just outside the city for some rare entertainment. Dog fights are considered a legitimate sport in Kandahar. Five Afghan National Auxiliary Police officers were in attendance, along with their commander, Abdul Hakim Jan. In fact, Mr. Jan had entered a dog in the competition.

A suicide bomber attacked. He blew himself up. Mr. Jan appeared to have been the target; he was killed. So were more than 100 others. Dozens more were wounded. The next day, at least 35 Kandaharis were killed near Spin Boldak, the result of another suicide attack. And a car bomb exploded in Kandahar city the day after that, killing one civilian and injuring three others.

Three days; so many innocent lives taken. All the incidents took place inside the Canadian military’s zone of security, combat operations and development. Realistically, none could have been prevented or avoided. But Kandaharis were understandably furious. “For God’s sake, stop this series of bloodshed,” said one man, Akbar Jan. “What can we do? Honestly, we can’t even go out and go shopping.”

Some even blamed foreign troops. I called my friend Aman Kamran, whom I described in Part One of this series last week. Mr. Kamran was always frank with me, but I wasn’t expecting such anger directed at Canadian and other coalition troops. “You took away one evil [the Taliban] and imposed another evil, even worse,” he said. “Why should I thank you for that?”

That seemed harsh, but Kandahar in 2008 was in a terrible state.

Canadian soldiers were losing ground against the Taliban outside the city, in the districts. The mission’s other counterinsurgency component, the crucial development and reconstruction approach, was going nowhere.

The Canadian government had identified its priorities in Kandahar -maintain a more secure environment, and establish law and order; provide jobs, education and essential services, such as water; provide humanitarian assistance to people in need; enhance the management and security of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border -but it could not point to any clear signs progress.

Reporters embedded at Kandahar Airfield were encouraged by Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs & International Trade (DFAIT) to interpret and describe Canada’s non-combat operations in Kandahar, but they were rarely afforded access to government personnel and civilian-focused projects on the ground.

Like the Canadian Forces, DFAIT assigned people in Kandahar to handle media requests; unlike the Canadian Forces, DFAIT denied or ignored most of the requests it received. This was a constant source of frustration for embedded journalists and for military personnel as well. The skeptics among us wondered if any civilian-led reconstruction and development efforts were being undertaken at all.

About 350 civilians and police officers were assigned to the Canadian-led Task Force in Kandahar at any given time. Most lived inside the heavily fortified Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) headquarters in Kandahar city. The PRT contingent included DFAIT officials, diplomats, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) staffers, plus Royal Canadian Mounted Police, provincial police and municipal police officers.

Few of the bureaucrats ever ventured outside; most remained inside the PRT compound for months at a time and had little direct contact with Kandaharis. Early in 2008, a high-ranking CIDA official attended an elders’ meeting in Panjwaii district, and shocked everyone in attendance by confessing it was his first trip “outside the wire.”

Time and again, Canadian soldiers found themselves involved in development and rehabilitation projects, which they thought were to have been led by CIDA. In some cases, they said, they never laid eyes on a CIDA official.

Nevertheless, Ottawa announced three more large funding initiatives in 2008: $50-million to rehabilitate the Dahla dam and Arghandab irrigation system; a polio-vaccination program for children across Afghanistan; and “more than $90-million” for education initiatives, including $12-million to rehabilitate and build 50 schools in Kandahar. Once under way, these “signature projects” did seem focused and reasonably well-managed. According to DFAIT, all objectives were being met and all three projects are now nearing completion.

The department has to be taken at its word because its claims cannot be independently verified. (DFAIT said this week that 41 schools have been rehabilitated or constructed in Kandahar province to date; of those, 40 are “operational.” The figures do not include the restoration of the Salavat school. That project, and 10 more school restoration and construction projects in the district, made up a separate $685,000 initiative led by CIMIC teams.)

Besides DFAIT and CIDA employees, the PRT headquarters in Kandahar city housed a small team from Correctional Service Canada; its job was to help train local prison workers and improve the archaic Sarposa prison, located on the western boundary of Kandahar city.

The corrections team was dealt blow after blow, which may explain why members rarely gave interviews. In May 2008, Taliban fighters detained inside Sarposa launched a hunger strike to protest well-publicized allegations of torture and abuse by their Afghan jailers. Some of the detainees sewed their mouths shut in protest. A month later, a truck bomb exploded outside the prison and destroyed its main gate. A swarm of insurgents rushed inside and opened small-arms fire on prison workers. About 1,100 inmates, including 400 Taliban, escaped.

Steps were reportedly taken to make Sarposa more secure and the training of prison workers inside the PRT compound was intensified.

In August 2010, local reporters were invited to witness a ceremony to honour new graduates of the Canadian training program. The ceremony was cancelled after a minivan filled with trainees hit an IED as it was leaving the PRT. One was killed and 11 were wounded.

Earlier that day, the appointed governor of Kandahar province, an Afghan-Canadian named Tooryalai Wesa, chaired a security conference in his downtown palace and complained to his key security directors lawlessness and violence in the city were “intolerable … I need you people to come with a plan.”

Mr. Wesa himself has been the target of Taliban attacks. In January, his deputy was killed while on his way to work. A sui-cide bomber on a motorcycle slammed into his vehicle.

The targeted killings continued. The Taliban mounted more spectacular assaults. Three months ago, they struck again at Sarposa, tunnelling into a high security wing and freeing about 475 prisoners, most of them insurgents. The prison break was very wellcoordinated, and signalled yet again that coalition and Afghan government efforts to secure the province were sometimes illusory. Kandaharis stopped to think twice: Had the Taliban received any help? Rumours swirled the escape was an “inside job.” The prison head and nine other workers were arrested and questioned, but no charges were laid.

News of the second Sarposa prison break reached Salavat within hours. Canadian soldiers stationed in the neighbouring forward operating base were on alert; everyone expected the freed insurgents to run from Kandahar city and into the districts.

The Taliban were by no means a spent force. They had been handed defeats in the fall during the coalition-led Operation Hamkari, and earlier this year, dozens more of their fighters had given up and joined a new Afghan “reconciliation” program that offered immunity from prosecution, plus free housing and government jobs. But they continued their campaigns of harassment and intimidation in Panjwaii, and in villages such as Salavat. Insurgents left “night letters” outside local homes. These warned residents not to accept aid and jobs from Canadian troops. “Conspirators” would be snatched from their houses and severely punished. The same went for anyone who allowed their children to attend the refurbished school.

“The insurgents have very strong intelligence,” Mr. Kalim told a Canadian sergeant during one of their regular meetings inside the forward operating base. “They know who is working for whom. Believe me, sir, I am scared to come here. Maybe they will come to get me. Everyone knows I am the malik of Salavat.”

The district governor wasn’t so easily frightened. Mr. Agha was appointed to his new position for a reason: He knew how to get things done.

The district had suffered for years under his predecessor, an illiterate and allegedly corrupt individual named Hajji Baran, whom some Canadians believed had harboured Taliban sympathies. When Mr. Baran was removed from office in December, Panjwaii’s future immediately seemed brighter.

Mr. Agha soon became acquainted with coalition soldiers in the district, men and women from the First Battalion, Royal 22nd Regiment, the last Canadian battle group to deploy in Kandahar. He also met a burly, gravel-voiced man with white hair and goatee. He wasn’t an active soldier, but he was always wearing Canadian fatigues.

In fact, Don Rector is a U.S. private security contractor and Vietnam veteran assigned to a U.S. Army human terrain team (HTT) that operates in Panjwaii. Broadly speaking, HTTs collect socio-cultural data and other local information that helps U.S. military leaders make informed decisions about tactics and operations in theatre.

Mr. Rector and his assistant, a U.S. social scientist named Rheanna Rutledge, were seconded to Task Force Kandahar; they were helping CIMIC soldiers in the effort to open schools across Panjwaii. They both wore Canadian uniforms because it made them feel safer. “Canadians are viewed as a friendly, nice people,” their commanding officer explained to me back at Kandahar Airfield.

Mr. Rector had a lofty goal. He wanted to see 1,000 new students in Panjwaii schools by the end of April. “And we started at zero,” he told me. Ms. Rutledge had a slightly different perspective. “The number of students enrolled is not so important, she said. “It’s what’s going on in two or three months. Are they still taking their lessons?”

District Governor Agha bought into the school program and laid down the law at a shura in early April. He instructed Salavat’s elders to ignore the Taliban threats. Send your children to school, he commanded.

“What kind of people don’t allow a school to open?” he asked, according to a Post-media News reporter invited to attend the meeting. If the elders didn’t comply, he said, he would “bring the army and police to your homes and drag your kids to school.” The elders acquiesced. An announcement was circulated through the village. Salavat’s school would open April 12.

One problem: The school had no teachers. No one in the village was remotely qualified to lead a classroom. Searching Panjwaii for candidates with teaching experience -even an education -and brave enough to risk the wrath of the Taliban was time wasted.

Afghans employed as interpreters for Canadian soldiers were press-ganged into service. They arrived at the school at the appointed hour, and waited. And waited. The children didn’t come. No one, it seemed, wanted to be the first.

The ice was broken the following day, when two dozen boys arrived for their lessons. Fifty boys showed up on day three, and more than 70 came to school the following morning. By the time I visited a week later, about 250 boys were crowded into a handful of classrooms. No girls. Salavat wasn’t quite ready for that.

The students were being taught by eight young men. They were, I discovered, highschool students Mr. Kalim had recruited in Kandahar city. “The malik called our high school and said he needed teachers,” one of the young men, Bilal Ahmad, told me.

“We checked out the secur-ity situation and we agreed to come. It’s supposed to be temporary until real teachers arrive. We’re supposed to finish our own studies in June.”

The recruits said they desperately needed the wages Mr. Kalim had promised them, about $42 a week each. The money for their salaries was coming from CIMIC soldiers, but only on a temporary basis. By May, the Afghan government was to start handling the payments through its Ministry of Education. But the Salavat teachers weren’t hopeful.

DFAIT sent a message to the CIMIC on the matter.

“The KC [Kandahar city] based Salavat teaches have been processed and registered and will start receiving their salary at the end of the first month of work,” the memo read. “Teachers with four-year college degrees will be paid $700/month to teach, whereas teachers with a two-year college degree with be paid according to [an Afghan government salary scale].”

This was baffling; since none of the Salavat teachers had finished high school, they could not meet the qualifications spelled out by DFAIT.

There were other issues. Mr. Kalim had promised to pick up his recruits every morning in Kandahar city, drive them to Salavat, and return them home in the afternoon.

But this arrangement had lasted only a few days; Mr. Kalim told the teachers they should hire a taxi. Which they did. The fare ate up a good chunk of their wages, but it appeared there was no compensation coming to them. The same DFAIT memo noted that their new salaries “should be enough to cover the transportation costs of the Salavat teachers’ daily commute from KC [Kandahar city] … the expectation is that they should cover their transportation costs out of their own salaries, no matter where they live and work.”

Was no one in Kandahar city aware of their situation? Was no one listening?

Salavat’s students, meanwhile, had their own challenges. They could not afford their own pens and notebooks. They asked their teachers to buy these items for them; of course, the teachers said they could not help. Meanwhile, security remained a grave concern. Attending school in Salavat took guts. Some of the children were harassed while walking to school.

“The Taliban approached them and threatened to cut off their noses,” Mr. Ahmad told me. “They are taking their school bags and burning their school books. One of the kids is really scared, but his father says it’s OK, he should still come to school.”

Mr. Kalim, for his part, made no apologies for breaking his promise to ferry his young charges to and from work. He offered no explanations, either.

“The teachers are using the money we gave you, to give to them, to pay for their taxi?” asked Sergeant Tony Swainson, a CIMIC team member.

“Yes,” Mr. Kalim admitted. Their discussion turned to other matters. Mr. Kalim proposed the Canadians pony up some cash to improve the school grounds. Some flowers and trees would be nice.

Sgt. Swainson said he would look into that. Mr. Kalim then asked for more. He asked for a swimming pool. Sgt. Swainson laughed.

What about cookies for the students? And a teapot for the teachers? And water? They have nothing to drink.

“We can provide food, but only on a sustainable basis,” replied Sgt. Swainson. “Pretty soon, the Afghan government will have to find a way to fund all of that.”

“How much longer will you be staying here,” asked Mr. Kalim.

“Not much longer,” the Canadian said. “We’re trying to help you and your government become more proficient. You’re going to be here a lot longer than us.” Mr. Rector didn’t hit his enrolment target of 1,000 new students by the end of April. But as Ms. Rutledge said, the numbers aren’t really the most important thing. It’s what happens after the schools open. Are the children safe? Do the teachers receive their pay? No one can answer these questions, yet.

According to Task Force Kandahar, “funding from [Afghanistan’s] Department of Education for the salaries of the teachers in Salavat is expected to be in place before the next school year starts [in September].”

By then, it’s expected all 11 schools under the CIMIC program will have opened in Panjwaii. Canada’s commitment to have built or refurbished 50 more schools across Kandahar is expected to be met by the end of this year. But it’s unlikely that anyone from DFAIT or the Canadian Forces will be around to see if the schools remain “operational.”

It would be something worth celebrating were they to remain open, but in the big picture, an infinitesimal achievement. Convincing the Afghan government of the need to assume all of its responsibilities -education in Salavat, good governance in Panjwaii and Kandahar, protecting and serving its citizens across Afghanistan -is proving an insurmountable task.

bhutchinson@nationalpost.com

All illustrations by Richard Johnson, National Post.
Contact the illustrator: rjohnson@nationalpost.comwww.newsillustrator.com

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Saturday, July 2nd, 2011, Posted In: Features